Painting With Jane Brushes

Welcome to another Jane at Home post! Join us as we paint watercolor flowers with Jane employee, Carli!

This brush line is designed specifically for acrylic painting and constructed using high quality materials. Begin your painting with confidence, knowing that you are using the same brushes that Kevin uses!

Jun 30, 2018 - Explore Janet Walsh's board 'Painting with Jane', followed by 337 people on Pinterest. See more ideas about painting, painting tutorial, acrylic painting tutorials. Jane Evans is a renowned Chinese Brush Painting artist, based in Cambridge, UK. Here she demonstrates how to paint roses to her afternoon class. Autentico brushes have high-quality synthetic bristles for a smooth, flawless finish. With Plain Jane Paints you'll find perfect finish brushes, and you will also learn how to paint and not leave brush marks. Available in a range of sizes to fit your project, get yours at Plain Jane Paints on 0405 303 191.

Painting With Jane Rustic Spring

Here’s what you need:

1 cup/jar of water

1 set of watercolor paint — preferably a set of at least 8 colors, but any set will do

2-3 fine tip brushes in varying sizes

Watercolor paper or cardstock paper (You don’t want to use regular paper because it’s too thin and won’t dry correctly)

Once you’ve got everything you need, let’s get painting!

Directions:

1. Painting the Leaves

To paint the leaves, you’ll want to mix a couple different shades of green. Carli usually mixes a darker green with a little bit of brown, and then a lighter green with some brown to get stunning sage colors that aren’t too bright. You’ll have to experiment a little to get the shade you want. Make sure you use enough water so the color isn’t too deep.

Use a larger brush for big leaves, and a smaller brush for small leaves. The key here is to make sure your brush is saturated with enough paint. Apply pressure to your brush and create 2 strokes to build the base of your leaf. Fill in the middle and let the watercolor do the work.

2. Painting the Rose

You can mix any colors you’d like, but for this rose, Carli mixed a blend of pink and orange with a little bit of yellow to create a pretty peach color.

When you start, you’ll want your color to be a little darker. Gradually add more water as you go, so the outside of the rose becomes lighter. Start with a thinner brush and paint a few circular lines around each other to begin forming the center of the rose. As you keep adding strokes around the rose, gradually apply more pressure to create thicker strokes.

You can also switch to a bigger brush to help create thicker petals. Add more water to dilute the color as you add petals to create dimension. You can go back in with some dark color to add more detail to the rose after you’ve finished the base.

3. Painting the Petal Flower

This is created very similarly to how the leaves are made, except Carli painted them using one stroke for each petal. Make sure your brush is saturated enough so that all the extra pigment goes towards the base of your petal. This helps create dimension. For the center of the flower, use a brown color and gently add some dots to the center.

4. Finishing Touches

Put all of the flowers together, customize your colors and add leaves to create a design of your own! Don’t worry about being perfect — practice and have fun with it!

We love how cute these flowers turned out! Tell us about your watercolor flowers in the comments.

Brushes!
I love exploring different types of brushes and exploring what they can do. There are some great shapes and sizes and brushes can be used to create a range of effects. The problem is which to choose? What type of hair? What size? What shape?

Princeton Neptune range of faux squirrel brushes.

For watercolour I have always loved natural hair brushes, especially sable and squirrel. My favourites are round brushes, and I've used Raphael sables and squirrel quills for many years. I also enjoy some flat, dagger and sword brushes, liners and other special effect brushes.
As natural hair has been harder to get in the US, due to changes in customs regulations, more companies are creating better synthetic versions of sable and squirrel brushes. I hope to try more over time. I am quite impressed with the Neptune brushes by Princeton, seen left. I particularly like the very cute 1' 'Mottler' brush - its short handle makes it very convenient for travel and plein air sketching. These are definitely soft brushes, with good water-holding capacity.
Roymac have been creating some good synthetic brushes for a while. Escoda has launched a range of synthetic sables that have reviewed well too. See Parka's review of the Versatil range here. Da Vinci brushes are excellent and come in a huge range of shapes, sizes and hair types. Their maestro sable and travel brushes are gorgeous - I love the size 8. You might also consider Isabey brushes.
For acrylics I prefer synthetic brushes, though I sometimes use some synthetic brushes to remove watercolour paint. And for oils I like hog bristle brushes with long handled sables for fine detail. I clean these carefully with vegetable oil and soap rather than turps.
I thought I'd share some great resources on brushes here. I plan to add to it over time. This first chart is from Dick Blick. It shows some of the many shapes available and what they might be used for.

Chart from Dick Blick - click here for the link on dickblick.com

Painting With Jane Brushes

How to measure a brush and information on the hair types. Click here to link to the chart on the website

Paint With Jane Cloud Brush

Brush sizes are difficult to compare between brands as there is no one universal sizing system. This is the Blick sizing chart but a Blick size 4 and a size 4 in another brand may not be the same size at all.

Brush sizing from Dick Blick. click here for the link to chart on the Dick Blick website For more on dagger and sword liners, see Liz Steel's post here. For suggestions on a few brushes to use to get started in watercolour, see here. For suggestions about travel brushes, see here and my website for more updated information at the bottom the page here. For a great guide to waterbrushes, see here. For more on waterbrushes see Parka's comparison here. More to come....